A mixed few days . . . .

The last few days have not been good, coinciding with some wild mood swings (not from me) and a number of difficult moments. These events always seem to come out of the blue, but also seem to reflect deeply held greivances that presumably bubble unseen under the surface at other times (perhaps most of the time).

The key issues remain ones of "philosophy of life" (broadly conceived). In particular, what one should aspire to as the goal of one's life. A few years ago I reached what I took to be a major point of transition and viewed life going forward as being based on very different foundations to that which it had been based on up to then. But I have been shocked to find that this view is not shared and that other, strongly-divergent views seem to have precidence. These include views that can only be categorised as based on "status" or "materialism" in some sense, and they are views that I don't share, nor have ever done so.

But what does also come to the fore at such moments is the vastly different histories that it is possible to hold about broadly the same events. More than anything else I have come across, these histories demonstrate the idea of "incommensurability" - narratives that purport to cover the same ground but are so wildly different as to form no basis for comparison of views.

What does this mean going forward? In the past, such "crises" have led to one of us adopting a particular view and the other opposing it. But I have to admit that I can no longer see a way to oppose the obvious conclusion.